BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR AND HUMANITY 4: POLICE TACTICS

Kinji Fukasaku,
Japan,
1974, Arrow Films

Part Four sees director Kinji Fukasaku and screenwriter Kazuo Kasahara further depicting the life-and-death struggle of the gangsters of Hiroshima and Kure, even as the rest of Japan is beginning to tire of their old-fashioned codes.

1963. Series hero Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara), expelled from the Yamamori gang, has allied himself with the cowardly Uchimoto (Takeshi Kato) and the Akashi family, who are engaged in a power struggle with the Shinwa Group, allied with the Yamamori. But mainstream society, enjoying unprecedented economic prosperity, will no longer tolerate their violent criminal activities...

The last film of the series written by Kasahara, POLICE TACTICS was original intended to be the final episode, until its phenomenal success led to one additional entry. A fin-de-siecle mood permeates throughout, with characters fully aware of their impending obsolescence, yet striving for a return to the less prosperous, simpler post-war glory days.